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Amy De’Ath

 

Amy De’Ath studied American Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and at Temple University in Philadelphia. Now 24, she has just finished an MA at University College London, and is working with Steve Willey to set up Openned Press – an off-shoot of the London reading series. In the near future she hopes to begin a PhD on lyric and sentiment in innovative poetry. Her poems have appeared in Onedit, Past Simple, and OFF_Magazine, and she is currently working on her first chapbook, The Highway Code.

 

 

 

 

But This Is Your Quota (Part 2)

 

    I was with back arched

a little bleeding

on the lip,

     possible scenarios arrived in

black-lined cartoon bubbles,

warm and strapped in bulbs

they were here and here but

they were hard to sell or proclaim or win,

my backside was frozen to the bed my

ankles ached but still

               either these are my shoulders ebbing

               or I’m in situ, about to sail

       with all the bulbs, ill-informed as

a cartoon bubble but not working against my own bones

at least; ill-informed but in formal dress,

    a June dress, a day gets longer and

longer and there’s nothing

imminently harmful here but

a prescient little sugar

to dose

a multitude of poor criminals

another aphoristic flex

a poem / palimpsest

aphorisms

anger aphids

aren’t they.

 

 

*

 

 

How far are you lyrically able to stretch in order to get

a decent seat on the precipice, to appreciate the

scope of this nomenclature?

 

If the participants are all trying to get some wear out of it

where none can get, if we all donned our p’s I wouldn’t be sitting

here (in front of you).

 

Trying not to notice the neckline of her blouse down song

off her shoulder totally, totally  you wouldn’t be averse

to a long drive.

 

When I would say it’s not my objective

to write your name on your behalf

at the bottom of our Xmas cards.

 

But it’s not crucial at all.  But prophetic as in mean-spirited

is he who turns primarily to correspondence

to dispel a kind (of) rumour.

 

Who isn’t awash with hues and dark

out to the island?  So, I’m pointing

the prophetic finger-

 

Did you mean in a roman?

in around a romance?

Roman,

 

Wild beasts or a simple houseplant would take you where you need to go but if technicality’s required then join dots

laboriously join and put.

 

Colour backing

in her

cheeks

 

you’re looking through the wrong

 

they’re in the right wing

 

they’re, my jewels

 

they’re in the glove box

 

I left them there

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

copyright © Amy De’Ath